Alan Parr explains, "I've always been amazed at the power and the effectiveness of the simulation technique, and whenever possible I've used simulations in mathematics.

"Since I've always loved sport as well, I decided a few years back to see how I could put them together to produce a maths-based World Cup simulation for teachers and pupils to use. The simulation proved very popular in primary and secondary schools....

"[E]ach of us rolls an ordinary die eight times, one for each scoring chance. Every time you roll a 6 you score a goal....

"How realistic [is the resulting distribution of goals]?.... I checked the entire season's results for the Premiership, and was delighted to find that the actual scores were remarkably close...."

In Brian Hayes' weblog, the author of the "American Scientist" Computing Science column elaborates on those articles, posts errata, records notes from conferences in progress, and explores other topics.

The blog dates back to January, 2006, and includes articles such as

Sudoku dans la Belle Epoque
on precursors of sudoku and the puzzle's history

Can You Divide by Three?

Grepping the Net

Life after Algebra

Packed Primes

The Oddest Numbers
on Dijkstra's recursive fusc function

Summing Up
research on the popular tale of a schoolboy-aged Gauss
rapidly summing a long sequence of numbers

The blog offers these and other posts in a category dedicated to mathematics.

As of July 5, 2006 the Mathematics Genealogy Project contains 97,935 records. Each of the searchable database's records includes:

the mathematician's name

the mathematician's dissertation title and advisor ("parent")

doctorate-granting institution

the names of the mathematician's own graduate students ("descendants")

The goal of the Mathematics Genealogy Project is to compile information about all of the mathematicians in the world and make the information available online.

The managing director of the Mathematics Genealogy Project is Harry B. Coonce, who notes that "we are trying to help trace the intellectual history of our subject." Dr. Coonce requests that the following information be sent to him for any Ph.D. mathematician not currently included in the list (or for whom there is an incomplete or inaccurate entry):

The complete name of the degree recipient

The name of the university that awarded the doctorate

The year in which the degree was awarded

The complete title of the dissertation

The complete name(s) of the advisor(s)

This newsletter is provided as a service of The Math Forum, an online educational community for mathematics hosted by Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA.

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